When I came out here in ’84 I had zero interest in doing TV,” Audience Network’s Loudermilk co-creator Peter Farrelly told TV critics at TCA. Best known for such films as Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber,Shallow Hal, etc., Farrelly said he was glad to make the move, to keep doing boundary pushing programming

Though Ron Livingston plays Sam Loudermilk, the abrasive recovering alcoholic/former music critic in the series, he solicitously asked TV critics at the Q&A if, with the proliferation of TV programming across broadcast cable and streaming outlets, they had to watch TV “until their eyes bleed.”

It’s not often that someone on a TCA panel makes a concerned remark to the TV critics. Mostly, the critics get belittled for failing to applaud when panelists take the stage, or when they look at their laptops during a Q&A. Livingston’s comment, therefore, was remarkable and earned him good will.

Asked if people “approach him differently” since he participated in HBO’s make-a-movie reality series Project Runway, which he abruptly quit in 2015, Farrelly described that as “not my favorite experience, explaining he had looked forward to working on the reality program, until he realized it had turned into “like a Housewives show.” That kept him up at night, he said, until he realized quitting was an option.